


To Each and All

by sarahgene12



Category: Les Misérables (2012)
Genre: Age Difference, Body Worship, Catholic Guilt, Dubious Morality, M/M, No Dialogue, Non-Canon Relationship, One Night Stands, Self-Flagellation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 17:37:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8111365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahgene12/pseuds/sarahgene12
Summary: There are some extremely unhealthy ways to work out feelings of anger and grief. There are some extremely unlikely events which change everything.





	

There was nothing more to be done. Nothing else he wanted finished, quite as badly as he wanted this part of his life to be ended. He wasn't a young man anymore,

could no longer afford a young man's fancies, his fantasies or his foolish dreams. He could not, as he so wished, as he so fervently prayed for (ah but no that was blasphemy!),

disregard his actions and throw caution to the wind. He was a grey and weary old man, starched and pressed and dusted and buttoned into a uniform so weighed down with medals

and ribbons that had he the urge to throw himself into the sea, he would sink faster than might an iron anchor. Sometimes, there was an urge so great he found himself facing the Thames toe-first upon 

a parapet, reeling in a great gust of wind. Most of the times it was only a dream. Twice now, it hadn't been. 

He was a coward. A weasel wearing a bear's coat, swiping its teeth and claws only to find that they are not as powerful nor as large as he first thought. 

In his mind now he could see only what his cracked mind allowed. There was a flash of red, brick-red, blood-red, a crimson shade to conjure the Devil Himself; a sinful red and oh what sins he had committed. 

Sins which before himself and before God could not be forgiven nor forgotten, sins of the flesh for which he must pay in due kind. He knew this. He knew even as his body stirred to the memory of a flickering flame,

of two whispering voices exchanging not quite words but pleadings, of the sensation of recognizing stately blue tossed among revolutionary red, of hands, both his own thick and clumsy and another's, dirty under the nails but nearly

without physical flaw. Younger hands. Hands which had held flag and flask and pistol against his government, a government he himself had sworn to serve and defend. 

He stood bare-backed in the center of the room, one of three which made up his quarters. Though spacious, the rooms were plain and not quite finished; he always wore his boots for fear of splinters, and the paint job had been applied only sparingly to one wall, as if the man who had begun it had been called away right in the middle. He had only a narrow bed, a narrow wardrobe, and a narrow rug, all of it made accessible by a narrow and lopsided door without a knob. His uniform jacket and trousers hung on a hook on the half-painted wall. He stood now only in his second pair of cotton trousers, and his boots. He held a long and lethal black leather riding crop in one hand. 

The tip and first few inches were chalky and stiff with dried blood; these bits stung a little bit more than the clean parts when they struck his broad back, and he fought back a cry of pain. This was right. This was what he deserved. Parts of his body still ached, muscles still thrummed where they hadn't before and he hadn't known they could. He still had to keep a pillow on the seat in his office; the hot baths had helped some, but there were some injuries (for this is how he thought of it, the only way he could think of it) which could only be healed with time. 

The worst had not been the blow to his pride, or the horror he had faced the moment he realized what he had done, but instead had come on its own in the late morning hours after the abominable night. 

He had awoken to a sight which still somehow haunted and thrilled him both. It was winter, and so the day had had a bluish light to it, a soft and cold touch. This cerulean light had played so stunningly off the blonde curls and pale, boyish shoulders of the young man in his bed that he could not believe any of it was real. The winter beams were less kind to the boy than the night's amber glow, and they showed more of the shadows between each rib, the sad sickly violet color under his eyes. But still he had been stunning, his hair fanning out and tossed over the single flattened pillow, his body curled in on itself against the chill. His red jacket with its tri-colored ribbon in the lapel had been crumpled on the unfinished floor. He had retrieved it and draped it carefully over the young man's naked body; his eyes studied for a brief moment the great contrast between his wrinkled and age-roughened fingers and the boy's smooth and freckled chest. 

Now he lashed himself over and over, punishing himself for these thoughts and the actions which had caused them. Wrong. It had been wrong and dangerous, and he hurt himself further by imagining this bright young boy even now laughing at him, regaling his fellow rebels with the disgusting story. What a fool. What an utter and completely useless fool he was. 

He lashed and lashed and lashed again, feeling the blood trickle down his back and down his calves to the floor, pooling at his feet, until he became unsteady on his feet and knelt with great force upon the splintered wood. It bit his knees and he relished the sensation even as he moaned from the searing, hot pain in his back. He bowed his head, tears swelling up in his eyes in the effort he gave to keep quiet, to swallow the agony he'd only brought upon himself. Bleeding, trembling, with red in his mind and red dripping silently from his wounds, he prayed.


End file.
